


Opening Dialogue

by ilyena_sylph, Merfilly



Series: Reckoning [7]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-28
Updated: 2016-11-28
Packaged: 2018-09-02 19:15:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8680159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilyena_sylph/pseuds/ilyena_sylph, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: Rex, well-aware there is a mystery behind Kenobi that he can't ask about from his family, decides to go to the source. This might, in hindsight, be both the best and worst option ever.





	

Parking Reckoning and the boy with the Noghri in their home had freed Ahsoka to go follow up on her personal mission, and Rex had only waited for her to get clear before he went to leave on his own errand. Ahsoka had taken her fighter and Arseven, which meant Rex had to wrangle the larger ship alone. Fortunately, they had been rigging the control panel to allow for that; as long as he didn't run into a combat situation, he should be fine.

Maybe he ought to look into acquiring another astromech for their family. Arseven might even appreciate the company. Then again, the droid might be a complete bantha rump to have another one around. Never could tell with the more personality-laden droids.

He took the most direct route back to Tatooine, not to the town they'd left from, but the spaceport that was actually closer, playing a hunch that the Jedi would still be trying to find a way off planet, as little time as Rex had allowed to pass before he got himself back there.

He wasn't far wrong; a deep-desert hermit was apparently ghosting through the port, inquiring about ships. Rex focused on the task at hand, locking his feelings and thoughts down, and started tracking, until he finally caught up to the man in a cantina, keeping his own hood up as he slipped in and went to lean on the wall nearest where the man was trying to wrangle passage for work. When the spaceman left the Jedi frustrated, Rex took advantage of the moment to sit.

"If you're trying to reach the boy, that would be a very bad move on your part," Rex said, even as he regretted the instant alert, almost panicked look and reach toward a lightsaber. "Hello, General."

Sudden presence -- no, it had been there, Obi-Wan just hadn't thought much of it, the cantina was crowded -- with attention focused on him, barely a breath to react to the presence before the _voice_ and cadence, intonation and inflection had a yet another damned panic attack trying to build. His hand dropped to the hilt of his 'saber, grief and fury mixing at what he felt sure he was going to have to do, before the quiet greeting (What? Why would -- ) shook his world just enough that he only laughed, dark and bitter. "If that's who you're looking for, you have the wrong person." 

The cloak was the same as Obi-Wan had seen before Luke disappeared, the carriage the same, and a different kind of fury (this one with himself) hit him. If he had just done something _then_ , when he saw the phase one armor... maybe he wouldn't have lost the last link he had to his brother, the last, sweetest thing Anakin had had a hand in. 

"I have exactly the person I need to see, sir, and better you talk to me than the rest of my _aliit_ , given that there's a lot of negative emotion about you there," Rex said in a low voice. "My word that I mean you no harm, at present, given that I only want to find out what the kriff is going on. I can also assure you that the boy is safe." He had not had any misgivings about leaving Reckoning with Luke; their dangerous partner was cycling between grief and wonder, but the temper was held firmly in check by his need to know the boy.

"Your _aliit_?" Obi-Wan repeated, startled to hear that word, and far more startled at having an at least mostly-civil conversation with a clone -- he hated to think of them so, but his encounter on Coruscant had not been his last run-in with the Imperial Stormtroopers. A clone, still holding an individual identity, who had ties to what could only be a Togruta, and one skilled with the Force, at that? 

From what little Owen had been willing to say, he was fairly certain that said Togruta had, indeed, been Ahsoka -- and while he was glad, so glad, to know she lived, he worried about what she might have chosen to learn and do in all the years since, worried about what her wildness might push her towards, and what that would mean for Luke. But at the moment, it posed another question... what _vod_ was this? "I suppose, then, that you might as well sit down. Old bones need more resting." 

"Could say that yours look twice as old as they ought, sir," Rex told him before he settled into the chair. "I know we had that damned aging against us, but you?" He shook his head, then realized that the man hadn't actually placed him. It made him rub his beard; would knowing make the situation worse or better? "I've got one question to ask first, sir, and I will apologize for the memories it brings, but I need to know. Did you save my brother from the nightmare that stole them all from who they were? Is Cody walking far away, because it would be a mercy to know he was."

Obi-Wan couldn't breathe, at that question, the pain of the memory of Cody behind him one moment and trying to kill him the next, the death of the dragonmount for him and the endless fall. Cody sending men to sweep for him, brothers he had bled for hunting him without a second thought, not understanding and not being able to catch Cody's mind at all...

"If he is... it wasn't at my hand," he finally answered, before something in the way the other man had said Cody's name, something about the way his hand had moved along his jaw... "Rex?" he asked, faint. 

Of course it would be Rex with Ahsoka, somehow, but... **how**? 

Rex's pain was clear as he stopped shielding his mind so tightly. "Damn. I hadn't heard rumor of him in all this time." He then nodded. "Yes, sir. The damned chip didn't get me. But I didn't get to tell anyone soon enough to save them. Other than 'Soka.

"Sorry to give you a fit, today and the other one. Wasn't sure it had been you until she got us back in space with the boy."

"...'chip'?" Obi-Wan asked, faint and confused, Rex's pain radiating out and sinking into the same shredded place where Cody's loss, losing Anakin, and the death of everything he had (despite all restrictions, all tenets, all his best efforts) loved still resided, raw and ripped-open again. "Rex, what...?" 

"You're not in touch with the Rebellion, then." Rex shook his head. "The kriffing long necks put chips in our heads so that karking coward could control us when the time came.

"Tup's misfired. Fives believed that there was more. He managed to set me on the right track before Fox murdered him." Rex had to pause. "It wasn't my brothers that killed your friends. It was _him_. And he's dead now, thanks to Ahsoka having more heart than brains."

"On Tatooine, it's hard to be in touch with much of anything," Obi-Wan replied, dark and wry, before Rex's words demanded all of his attention. "Tup... with Tiplee and Tiplar," Obi-Wan remembered, remembered Anakin's frantic pain and misery, remembered hearing that Fives -- Fives, who was so young and so brazen all at once -- had been killed on Coruscant... "Something that _controlled_ them. That's -- that's why it felt like they disappeared." 

He felt dizzy, lightheaded and nauseous, and grief wracked through him again, grief and guilt at all the years he'd near-hated them... 

Rex reached out, laying a gloved hand on the man's forearm, squeezing just slightly. "Sorry you didn't know until now, sir." /Cody, my brother… I'm sorry I failed you, vod./ He then schooled his features away from the grief and anger and pain that still shot through him for the way they had been used. "Now, I purposefully didn't rile up my _aliit_ by asking just what in stars had both of them angry at you. Care to fill me in on your side of why my general's son was on this hellhole?"

He had a very bad feeling that whatever Ahsoka had been so furious over, concerning Reckoning's original injuries when he'd been Vader, had to do with this man. But he had a hard time seeing that it could have been done in malice, and wanted Kenobi's side, unfettered by the emotions that would have choked either of the other two telling him.

For a long moment, Obi-wan could do nothing but push into the hand on him, but then Rex went on talking, and the comfort turned to ash. He blinked once before his eyes locked hard on Rex's face, as 'both of them' registered and sent a pulse of fear through him, his body torn between shying back and lashing out. The Emperor was dead but Vader had only disappeared, and for there to be someone else angry with him... 

Vader. Vader, with Anakin's son. With Ahsoka, and now with _Anakin's son_. How could Rex _possibly_ say the boy was safe, if that -- 

"Not him. Not my general, either. Whatever Force mess Ahsoka managed on the man she defeated, it's made someone new. Someone with both sets of memories, but with a better, steadier grasp on reality," Rex said in a low, quiet voice. "Yes, my commander beat him, head to head. Didn't know that for a while; feared she was dead, to be honest.

"She got him off the world they met on, sent a pulse that she was alive, but tied down. Next thing I know, it's been weeks, and she's comming to let me know where to meet them. New armor, able to use a _jetii'kad_ that's not red, and the main reason that piece of filth is dead. Because he listened to 'Soka, and joined forces with her."

" _Any_ grasp on reality would be a profound improvement over Vader," Obi-Wan replied, a low growl deep in his throat as Rex read him so easily. That information was... baffling, and he turned it around like a piece in a youngling puzzle, trying to figure out how to make it fit into his world. "Ahsoka beat him. Truly? I am amazed. And the rest of it... I don't understand, Rex. 

"She pulled him back from a Fall _that_ complete?" 

Rex smiled, warm and proud and soft all at once. "Sir, she's nothing like you remember, I promise you that. I was afraid, when we made it out of the mess that was the Purge, that she'd lose something of herself. And maybe she did, but mostly, it forged her into someone that doesn't know how to stop being a Light for everyone. The Rebel Alliance pulled her in pretty quickly, and she has been fighting for their cause for years now.

"She helped me go after as many of my brothers as we could get to, found ways to help them, once we got the chips out, and they had their breakdowns. She's taken on bigger risks than I really want to think about, and through it all… she kept learning the Force. Granted, I'm not real fond of her favorite teacher, and hate that I owe the fact I stopped aging so much to that witch, but. It is what it is, and I'll grudgingly admit that Ahsoka is something more than any Jedi or Sith I ever saw.

"So yes, she did. She decided she was not going to leave him there, that she wasn't going to kill him, and instead, she helped reforge him into the man he's becoming."

Obi-Wan shook his head in amazement and confusion alike, but all of Rex's faith and pride was unmistakable, and it carried ghost-images on the Force, a woman tall and strong and powerful and gentle despite it. He carefully, carefully ignored the 'that witch', not wanting to even contemplate that _she_ still roamed and he had had no idea, if that was who Rex meant. As long as he did not think about it, he could ignore it. 

'Reforge'... that was an interesting phrasing, from Rex. He took it for what it was worth, and despite his terrified misgivings, nodded once. "I suppose I can do nothing but take your word for it, Rex, and hope to the Force that you are correct. 

"Impossible as that seems, to me." 

"I wouldn't have left the boy anywhere I thought there was danger, sir," Rex pointed out. "With the sorry shape Mandalore and its children are in, I've taken my culture a bit more serious, even if she'll never claim any of us Vod'e as her own.

"Ahsoka doesn't get angry and stay that way easily, sir, so care to help me understand just how she is at you? When, so far as I know, Kanan's the only Jedi we've either of us had much dealing with since everything?"

Obi-Wan sighed, low and soft, and looked away from Rex's face, looked at a barren spot on the wall, and saw the desperate trip back onto Coruscant, feeling death after death searing into his nerves through the Force, the entirety of the galaxy going darker, and darker... "To explain that, Rex -- and why I find that you think Luke is safe so impossible to believe -- we have to go back to Coruscant, a little less than a day after the beginning of the Purge, and then to Mustafar, just after." 

"Want to do that here, or would you rather the privacy of the ship, sir?" Rex asked him, seeing so many emotions on the Jedi's face. "I'm probably not going to like hearing any of it, but I can't see you wanting much to say it, either."

"I certainly don't want to," Obi-Wan agreed, his nerves rubbed raw, but Rex had a good point, "but even now, privacy is still best for things like that, for those days. All right, lead, then." 

Rex stood, falling to a protective vantage almost by nature, as he guided Obi-Wan out, using his bulk to make way, eyes and ears alert for danger to the Jedi currently under his protection. He had never shaken that mentality, even if it had been hyper-focused on Ahsoka for the longest time. Getting Kanan to trust him, getting to watch over Ezra, had been a welcome, soothing thing. Neither Wolffe nor Gregor felt that pull, one from his injuries and losses, and the other… well, Gregor was special.

He guided Kenobi to the ship, opening the hatch and guiding the man to the small lounge. "Tea, kaf, or other?" he invited.

Watching Rex move, on point and high alert, older and slower but no less the soldier, no less a _vod_ protecting his Jedi, hurt like a commando-droid's fist under his ribs and up, but Obi-Wan dealt with it, breathing in and out slow and deep, until they were inside the ship he had seen those days ago. He could feel traces of Luke's presence, of the -- the _blaze_ \-- that was Ahsoka now, and... he did his best to ignore his sense of the Force after the first flicker of something thoughtful and somehow cool and heated both at once. 

"Tea, if you don't mind, Rex. Thank you." 

"I don't mind a bit, sir." Rex moved with practiced ease in the small galley, making a mug of tea for Kenobi and one of kaf for himself. He made a note to himself that Ahsoka still hadn't stocked her preferred cocoa. He could handle that with a quick jaunt before they went home; she was somewhat calmer when she drank it instead of the kaf. "If you're hungry, there's ration bars; we don't tend to stock food on the ship other than those, or the nutrient shakes."

"No, I'm all right. I... don't want more than the tea, anyway," Obi-Wan told him, turned to watch Rex moving -- to watch company that wasn't the banthas he'd named and talked to more than he had anyone else in years, really -- and took the tea once it was handed over. 

"I thought maybe we were finally going to be okay," he heard himself saying, having not meant to, "when I left for Utapau. I knew he was upset not to be going with me -- and **Force** do I wish I'd told the Council where to shove its collective consciousness, Grievous was Anakin's hunt, not mine, from the beginning! -- but he seemed... better, than he had been in... some time. 

"That might be what made things even more terrible, at least for me." 

Rex sat at the table with his own kaf, watching Kenobi. He remembered his own feelings, as he uncovered all that he had heard the 501st had done on Coruscant. He remembered when he first suspected who Vader was. He recalled the absolute breakdown he had when it was confirmed to him. 

How much worse had it been for the man that had more or less finished raising his general, and been his brother in ways that went even beyond the bonds of a vod with their batch?

"I can see that, sir," Rex said quietly. "Ahsoka and I, at least, had no reason to hope for anything good, not after what we went through."

"Mmm... I would ask, but I'd only be hiding from it, so... that for later?" Obi-Wan did want to know, how they had survived, what they knew... but at least they had known what had happened to cause the betrayal he had lived with _un_ knowing for so long. "I'd only just gotten back to -- to Cody -- from ending Grievous when... it happened. Somehow, between the fall and the current, I found his pod before I could be found, and then... Bail had Saesee's transmitter, was using it to try to pull any of us that had survived to him to protect..." 

Rex nodded. "Organa's been a strong ally, and I knew that he'd tried to protect the Jedi. Rumor has it, he's had access to one or another." He laid a hand back on Obi-Wan's arm. "My brother would never have been able to live with losing you. I know that deep in my soul."

Obi-Wan tightened his fingers over Rex's, his gut twisting and his heart tight... but something in Rex's dark eyes made him want to believe that. Rex had known Cody best, he would -- He nodded, jerky despite his best attempt at evenness. 

"Yoda and I were the only two that reached him. He was summoned to Coruscant, which got us back on the planet. We -- made it into the Temple." He was quiet for moment, two. "It looked like Ventress had been there, but it... some of the security footage -- I watched my brother slaughter children, Rex."

Rex dropped his eyes, shame burning bright in him. "My men. The ones I left in Appo's keeping. I know. That…" He swallowed hard. "That was part of what I dug out, half-praying I was wrong, that he wasn't with them… but deep down, I knew." He looked back up, his dark eyes holding a grief that mirrored Obi-Wan's. 

Obi-Wan moved, sliding as much closer as he could get, the feeling of Rex's shame something he couldn't stand... but could do so little to help. "You told me yourself," he said softly, "they had no choice, Rex. Ana -- Vader -- did. 

"Yoda sent me after him, while he went to deal with Sidious. I knew the only chance I had of finding him... was Padmé. I didn't believe she'd known what he'd done, but if he was gone from the planet, he would not have left without telling her something."

"Not so certain about that, Kenobi," Rex said in a gruff voice. "Ahsoka wouldn't have taken a chance on a murderer-by-choice in quite the way she has. She keeps Ventress far from me, from any of her assets, but she let him into her safe-haven.

"There have been words about the Order, and about Sith access to children in my hearing, when I was working near them on the ship."

So, it was Ventress, after all. Ventress, alive after all this time... but wait, what? 

'Sith access to children' echoed like a ricocheting blaster-bolt in the back of his mind, and he felt a violent surge of nausea. He had spent so much time turning over how he had done so terribly, how he had missed knowing what Anakin was becoming, not understanding any of it... but he had never considered that. Never considered the idea that he had failed to see that that 'friendship' with the Chancellor might have had even more sinister layers than the obvious. 

What was wrong with him, that he had never registered that possibility? 

With an odd clarity, an answer came to him: namely, that he had been unable to face the idea that he had failed his brother in yet another way. "That... I don't know if that helps, or makes it even worse, Rex.

"When I reached Padmé, and discovered her condition... that was not a good moment. All I could see were the dead children, and the idea of him having one of his own coming, plus her refusing to tell me where he had gone was -- I admit, I manipulated her fairly badly, departed, and promptly stowed away on her ship. 

"I had to find him, Rex, and I meant to kill him when I did." 

"Would that you had, then, sir," Rex told him and meant it. The Empire could not have solidified its stranglehold nearly as well as it did if it had not had Vader to finish the process of wiping out the Force users that had been rallying points of Rebellion. He'd seen what just Ahsoka had managed in her time; Kanan was -- or had been growing into -- just as effective a figure to rally around. Certainly the Inquisitors were powerful enemies for them as well, but the experienced Jedi out there had been able to hold them at bay, most of the time.

"I know, Rex. Believe me, _I know_. I could hear her trying to talk him down, reason him away from his insanity, after she landed on Mustafar. It wasn't... going well, but when I showed myself -- I knew my brother was already dead. Because he turned on _her_ , Rex. He had her in a Force Choke. **Her** , of all people!" Obi-Wan raked his hand back through his hair. 

"It did make it a little easier to fight him, seeing that," he had to admit. "But it was... an awful, awful fight. Too fast to keep track of, mostly. But it ended, mostly, with me having made it onto a 'shore' of sorts, with Vader balanced on one of the lava-harvesting droids in the flow. 

"I told him not to try it, Rex, I _told_ him not to try it..." 

That he had… Rex had to fight a wave of fresh anger and illness alike down, as the Senator of Naboo had been something of an inspiration to the entire 501st. That their General was mad for her had never been much in doubt, no matter that they had to pretend they didn't know. 

He had hurt her? It took some moments for him to fully process the rest of Kenobi's words. "Try what?" he managed to ask, forcing himself to hear the rest.

"To make the jump at me. To try to continue the fight. He said something Sith-mad, and jumped anyway. I don't know **how** he got that height! He fell away from me, almost in the flow itself, with only -- with only his limbs severed, not at all the blow I meant to strike, and... I felt the Emperor coming. 

"He'd stopped trying to hide, after all. I could not let him find her, find Anakin's child. I turned and I ran for Padmé, Rex." 

Rex considered Ahsoka's extended exhaustion following bringing Reckoning into their lives, a fatigue she had not managed to beat fully before they went after the Emperor. Which had led to extended sleeping periods, he recalled. Just like the witchcraft she'd used against his aging had done to her, though on a lesser basis in his case. 

"That… hmm. I wonder if either of them can consider that angle. I'd like to think she can, but given that I'm fairly certain she healed the majority of whatever damage was left behind in that black suit of his… it might take her a bit," Rex told Kenobi, piecing it all together.

Obi-Wan made a quiet, dark noise. "It's not as though it really matters, Rex. Luke is gone, but... at least it is with Ahsoka, and not to... worse hands. She must have been very convincing, to manage against Owen's stubbornness." 

"Why doesn't it matter, sir?" Rex demanded, eyes going hard. "You care about the boy. You used to give a damn about 'Soka. And Reckoning… might do him good to hear your side and the two of you hash out some kind of closure.

"Just because the Emperor is dead doesn't mean the fighting's done, and part of that is protecting the _aliit_ ," he finished fiercely.

Obi-Wan stared at him for a moment, the fierceness honestly baffling, especially since it didn't seem to be entirely turned in his direction. "Rex..." he swallowed, breathed, and tried to start again. "Yes, I care about Ahsoka. I always did, and knowing she's alive, I still do. Luke -- even cut off from him as I was -- has been my reason for keeping going for fifteen years.

"But if your 'Reckoning' is... actually recovering... from what Vader did and was, I am surely the last being that should be anywhere near him." As the Force had made it quite plain several days ago that he was still not permitted to join those he loved in death. 

"Then I'm not sure why I even bothered to come back, sir," Rex said stiffly. "I get it. You're hurt. You lost everything. And you just lost your last link. I'm sure _no one_ can understand what that's like, to have your entire world taken from you. I'm sure that's plenty of reason to give up on the pieces that might still exist."

Rex stood from the chair he was in, carrying his mug back to wash it out, rather than sit there, when he was hurt and angry and could not understand how this man he had once respected so much could give up without even trying to make the pieces fit again.

Obi-Wan watched him, Rex's stiff pain and anger and confusion, the vicious edge to that 'no one' and the rest of the particular sarcastic tone that was one of the _vod'e_ in more pain than he could stand slapping him across the face. No, of course Rex _did_ understand, possibly better than anyone else could -- which made that 'give up on the pieces' twist even more of a knife in his chest. 

He had never known how to have a family, how to accept the bonds of immediately, unguarded love Anakin had tried to give him, that Ahsoka had followed with. Even with Cody, who he had held onto so tightly, he had never been able to give back the unguarded emotion that his entire training had taught him was anathema to what he should be, and his experiences had taught him ended in _their_ deaths, not his, when he would have, gladly, for any of them. 

"Rex, I -- that's not -- I failed them both, in every conceivable _way_ , and apparently even more than I knew. That she's been out there fighting all this time -- sweet _Force!_ \-- and I never had any idea?! I don't -- " 

"You think she's not going to place protecting the son of the only Jedi to fight for her as a pretty big reason to drop out of the fight?" Rex asked him. "But she won't even get there, unless you give her a chance to understand what you did.

"Or how solidly can we keep the new man from sliding back into Vader, if you and he don't hash it out and find an ending, one way or the other? If you're looking for death, just torque him off instead of using your skill in words. You'll get your wish; he can almost keep up with her now."

Rex cleaned the mug, dried it, then locked it back into the holder in the cabinet, using those simple, domestic actions to center and try to rein in his disappointment.

"Oh yes, and put fresh blood on his hands, when you say he's trying?! I don't **think** so!" Obi-Wan snapped before he knew it, an edge of fury at himself riding it, more than at Rex. He had, after all, just a few minutes ago, been half-contemplating the chances of his death at one of their hands, and feeling the old familiar longing for it. 

"Then _talk_ to one of them. Her, if you're so certain he won't listen, because he sure as _haran_ listens to her!" Rex snapped right back, turning to face the former general. "You know how my _jetii_ was: he obsessed. Got the impression Vader did too. You think that's changed in Reckoning? Yeah, he's got the boy to raise, but how's it going to play out if he's always half-wanting to find you and get his payback for the suffering? Or if he becomes convinced you will try to take the boy away again?"

He knew _very_ well how Anakin had been, Obi-Wan thought, exhausted all over again, but Rex... did have points, angles he hadn't considered. If not confronting him could lead to further harm, lead to anything happening to Luke...

...but what of Leia? 

He was too unused to deception, after all this time, too unused to guarding his tongue. What would happen when he let them know -- and how deep would that obsession run over Padmé's daughter. And on the other hand, what happened when the Force led him in that direction, all unknowing? Could he risk Bail to that? 

No, no he could not. "Either of those... would be terrible. You're right, Rex. As you so often are." 

"Of course I am, sir. Programmed," and he said it with deliberate irony, "to be a problem solver, remember?" The former Captain of the GAR's 501st forcibly calmed himself. "So where's the rest of your belongings, if you have any, for us to get? Ahsoka took off on some mission or other, but we can make do on the ship with each other's company until she gets back to do this… just not on this dustball! The heat makes me hurt worse."

There had been a time when baking his muscles and joints might have seemed good, but Rex had adapted too much to his mate and her cooler temperature, the way her hands soothed his aches and pains.

Obi-Wan gave a quiet growl at that 'programmed', though he did hear the ironic tone and firmly approved of it. Belongings? He had very little, but...

Anakin's lightsaber and Ahsoka's beads, a single holo of him and Qui-Gon, the few other trinkets he had stuffed into a box and run with on his flight from the Temple... those were the only things he wanted. He certainly did not want to leave them to Jawas or Tuskens. "Out in the Dune Sea. I think I can remember how to handle a ship in atmo -- it will be easier than steering you by 'that rock there, no the _other_ one' to my abode." 

"Just don't break it; it's been their project, and now they've roped the boy into helping mod it," Rex said, pushing himself into the cool, calm place that was where he needed to be. He then walked closer to Kenobi and brought his hand up to the man's shoulder, in the manner of the vod'e, greeting the man. "Thank you, sir, for listening."

"He must be delighted at that," Obi-Wan said softly, before his hand came up to match that greeting, unfamiliar as it now was. "A real interstellar ship, not just a skyhopper. As to listening... I do _try_ not to be a complete idiot. I... could not see the use in stirring those old wounds, but you're right." 

"We're all we've still got, Kenobi," Rex told him. "Ought to see what happens when we run into a B1 that's been repurposed; I actually make conversation," he half-joked, just to see if it made the man smile a little. 

"...that," Obi-Wan replied, "I _will_ have to see to believe." 'We're all we've still got'... what an odd, odd phrase, but not untrue.


End file.
